“One will suffice,” answered the Premier. “I had an unpleasant dream last night about this very ring——”
“Ah!” ejaculated the King; “Did you dream that I had dropped it in the sea on my way to The Islands yesterday?”
He spoke jestingly, yet with a kindly air, and Lutera gained courage to look boldly up and straight into his eyes.
“I did not dream that you had lost it, Sir,” he answered—“but that it had been stolen from your hand, and used by a spy for unlawful purposes!”
A strange expression crossed the King’s face,—a look of inward illumination; he smiled, but there was a quiver of strong feeling under the smile. Advancing a step, he laid his hand with a light, half-warning pressure on the Premier’s shoulder.
“Dreams always go by contraries, Marquis!” he said;—“I assure you, on my honour as a king and a gentleman, that from the moment you lent it to me, till now,—when I return it to you,—that ring has never left my finger!”
CHAPTER XV. — “MORGANATIC” OR—?
The Royal ‘at home’ was soon over. Many of those who had the felicity of breathing in the King’s presence that afternoon remarked upon his Majesty’s evident good health and high spirits, while others as freely commented on the unapproachableness and irritability of the Marquis de Lutera. Sir Walter Langton, the great English traveller, who was taking his leave of the Sovereign that day, being bound on an expedition to the innermost recesses of Africa, was not altogether agreeably impressed by the Premier, whom he met on this occasion for the first and only time. They had begun their acquaintance by talking generalities,—but drifted by degrees into the dangerous circle of politics, and were skirting round the edge of various critical questions of the day, when the Marquis said abruptly: